Willis Tower

Willis Tower is a 110-story, 1,450-foot-tall building (1,730 feet counting its twin antennas) on the southwest side of downtown Chicago. Willis Tower, finished in 1973 and known as Sears Tower until 2009, attracts an estimated 25,000 visitors daily. In 2013, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ruled that the exposed steel mast on the 104-story 1 World Trade Center in Manhattan, N.Y., should be considered a spire, not an antenna, making its official height 1,776 feet. The ruling means that Willis Tower would be unseated as the nation's tallest building.

The night was about celebrating big mistakes.
Former Obama campaign Chief Technology Officer Harper Reed shared how an extended diet of vodka, hot dogs and Dinty Moore beef stew gave him gout.
There was that time in high school when Table XI Chief...

The controversial Illiana toll road won a key vote Thursday from a regional planning group.
On Wednesday, an effort by a companion agency to block the proposed Illiana toll road fell short. Opponents on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s...

An effort by members of the Chicago region's top planning board to block the proposed Illiana toll road fell short Wednesday, but another vote on the highly contentious project is due Thursday.Illiana opponents on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for...

1. Fun with cardboard boxesLast year, my son and I went to "Unboxed," a pop-up shop sponsored by the ChicagoChildren's Museum, whose sole focus was to encourage creative play with cardboard. Dig up that old shoe box currently housing bits...

The fall architectural calendar is packed with major events in Chicago, New York and Shanghai. Here are 10 worth watching.
Reclaiming the lower Manhattan skyline: More than 13 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the 104-story One World Trade...

As traffic on the World Wide Web came to a crawl the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, chicagotribune.com communicated with many of its readers via e-mail. This is the third of four Tribune Alerts that were sent that day to more than 19,800 readers -- and that...

As traffic on the World Wide Web came to a crawl the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, chicagotribune.com communicated with many of its readers via e-mail. This is the second of four Tribune Alerts that were sent that day to more than 19,800 readers -- and...

There's just one problem with the push to drive less, buy an electric car, commute by public transit or ride bikes: People are doing it.
"I feel so much better," said Scott Sanderson, who ditched his car years ago in favor of pedaling his...

I spent Friday with a trio of Chicago architectural giants: Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It wasn't a very lively encounter. Each of them has been dead for decades. The setting, though, was stirring: the serene,...

Chicagoans eager to see the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform their famed daredevil stunts at the air show this weekend can catch the military jets a few days early when they fly over the city for a photo shoot Wednesday.
Six pilots are scheduled to fly from...

I'm all for affording former Mayor Jane Byrne a long overdue geographical honor, but I draw the line at the Circle.
Byrne, now 80, Chicago's only female mayor, served from 1979 to 1983, but never had her name slapped on a park, street, building, monument...

As Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rahm Emanuel traded friendly banter before an audience at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park on Wednesday, the stage represented a mutual comfort zone for two veteran politicians looking for support.
For Clinton, the...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s latest idea to boost Chicago’s tourism numbers involves finding a company to light up city bridges, buildings, CTA platforms and other locations to hopefully “transform the world’s opinion of Chicago” and convince people to visit...

“Watch Dogs” the hotly-anticipated crime saga out for the Microsoft and Sony game consoles as well as PC is a stunning triumph in video game design that raises the bar visually for every open world game that will come after and will give gamers...

Visitors were back on the Ledge this morning, stepping into the four glass boxes that jut from the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower, after a protective coating that shattered was replaced.“There’s a lot of excitement up here, that’s what there always...

For a few frantic seconds, Alejandro Garibay thought the only thing between him and the street 103 stories below was a pane of glass that was rapidly cracking as he sat in the clear box jutting out of the Willis Tower.
“I had my palms on the floor and...

Books become TV series. Amusement park rides become movies. Pop songs become Broadway musicals. But how do you adapt a city into a video game? How do you digitize the essence of a major American metropolis within the framework of a playable experience?...